I CAN’T DO MINDFULNESS

When I was away this summer I attended a Mindfulness class on a bit of grass under some swaying palm trees. It was a heavenly spot to practice Mindfulness and I was excited at the prospect of finally getting the hang of it. The only problem with the space was that we were outside, just a couple of days before the hurricane swept through, so I suspect the increased wind factor was the reason why my mind was more concerned with getting crushed by a falling coconut than concentrating on bliss by swathing myself in colours.

First, she asked us to think of colour.

“Black” I thought to myself. Although, this decision concerned me. “Is that a colour? Am I allowed black? Oh well, I like black, I’ll stick to black for now”.

Then she asked us to imagine covering ourselves in that colour.

“OK, change the colour, you look like you’re in a shroud – it’s not working” I thought to myself.

So I tried white.

“Still a shroud”.

I tried Red.

“Too much”.

Green?

“Now I’m the same colour as the grass and think I’m meant to stand out from the grass”..

Yellow?

“Definitely don’t try yellow, I hate yellow”

and so on….my thoughts lurching back to the coconuts every few seconds so my eyes weren’t even closed because they were too busy checking the coconuts and wondering how much time I would have to roll out of the way or whether it would be better to stay still but use my arms to protect my head. How much bruising would that leave me on my arms? Would it even break my arm?

Then she made a high pitched sound using a metal bowl and some sort of implement that she wandered around with, finally coming close enough to my ear to make me feel like I was in the dentist’s chair, so I then moved on to thinking about being at the dentist and how I needed to book appointments for me and my children ASAP and how expensive it all was and what an outrage that all dentists seem to be private these days and was it any surprise that the state of the nations teeth were so bad.

Then I was asked to move along a bit because some of the people next to me discovered they were lying on an ants nest and needed to move.

This is not the first time I have tried Mindfulness, but at no point has it done anything other than highlight the absurdity of the situation and in particular, my thought processes. I just don’t seem to be able to do it. Everyone else loved it and went back for several other sessions during the week. I did not. No point. It just makes me feel silly. I do not feel serene and clear headed, I feel conscious of my thoughts and subsequently distracted and any time I came a little closer to feeling like I was about to remove all thoughts simply resulted in my next worry – that I would fall asleep and start snoring – just like one of the men in our group did.